One of the themes that I discuss frequently is the cross-pollination between the various streams of fringe history, notably the swapping of ideas among ancient astronaut, Atlantean, and Nephilim hypotheses. To that end, I’ve pointed more than once to the way Ignatius Donnelly implicitly equated the Nephilim with the denizens of Atlantis in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), notably when he describes Atlantis as the “antediluvian world” and, explicitly, that in Genesis 6 “the Antediluvian World was none other than Atlantis.”

But I’m always learning things, and it’s interesting to see that Donnelly was but a pale reflection of the first wave of speculation that much more clearly—and much earlier—explicitly made Atlantis into the land of Nephilim and their parents, the Watchers.

Our first piece of testimony comes from Constantine Samuel Rafineseque, who was for a long period of his life a respected if impecunious scientist. But Rafinesque fell on hard times and he started presenting increasingly unhinged claims about ancient history in a desperate bid for cash. A couple of months ago, I mentioned that Rafinesque invented a lost race of white giants called the Atlans (or Atlantes), but it turns out that he had some choice ideas about how these giants got to America. In his book The American Nations (1836), Rafinesque proposed that the Atlantes were the descendants of Cain and populated the Americas when they were sent there after Noah’s Flood:

The Cainites or Cabils have been deemed parents of the Atlantes and Africans. They were skilful, powerful and wicked, inventing agriculture and arts, building cities &c.: while the Sethites invented astronomy, letters and dwelt in tents. If the American Atlantes were antidiluvian, they must have sprung from the Atlantes Cainites, KIN of Moses.

In 1170 years after Adam, the Egregori angels of Mt. Ima, came to Mt. Hermon, in 20 tribes, under their king Semi-Azar, and uniting with the Cainites, gave birth to the Rephaim, Nephilim and Eliud, tribes of Giants, tyrants and Canibals: who made war on the angels and men. They are said in the Bible to have gone to Sheol (the lower world or South America) with their king Belial: where they were drowned by the flood. See Universal History.

The Giants dwelt in Talo-tolo, the world Tolo of the Hindus, where we find the Tol-tecas (Tol-people:) therefore America: called also Atala and once sunk in the waves; like the Atlantis of the Greek, whose Atlantes were also Giants or powerful men. The Egregori have been deemed the Titans of the Greeks, and Atlas was a Titan. Although Gigantic Nations existed in America, the Talegas, Toltecas, Caribs, Chilians, &c. being often such: the term Giant must always be understood to refer to powerful perverse men.

We’ll leave aside the implicit racism that Native Americans are genetically evil. We see here in embryo the later fringe claim that the “underworld” was really the “opposite” world, that Hell is South America! More than one fringe writer currently advocates the idea that when Odysseus went to the Underworld he actually crossed the Atlantic. But it’s also interesting to see the Egregori (the Watchers) appearing in a “science” book, in partially rationalized form. But most interesting of all is Rafinesque’s claim, specifically, that the Giants were cannibals—a claim derived from Jewish apocryphal lore—and that these same giants populated prehistoric America as a consequence of the Flood.

But Rafinesque merely applied to America a claim that was already circulating among scholars and pseudo-scholars that identified Atlanteans with the Nephilim and Atlas with Noah. Ten years earlier, in the fringe mythology tract Nimrod: A Discourse upon Certain Passages of History and Fable, the author, Algernon Herbert, asserted that “the far-flamed Atlantis” was “the residence of the Nephilim or Titans.”

If you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole, it turns out that Algernon Herbert was a crank of the first order. He was also the author of a book called Cyclops Christianus in which he tried to prove that Stonehenge and other megalithic remains were not ancient but rather medieval constructions in Germanic style, built for King Arthur. In that same book he endorsed the view that Native Americans were actually the product of Kublai Khan’s Mongol fleets, and therefore earlier ruins could not be theirs.

Herbert was a younger son of the second Earl of Carnarvon. His brother, Henry, who inherited the earldom, was the grandfather of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who financed the excavation of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 and accidentally sparked the legend of the Mummy’s Curse when he died of blood poisoning. It can be weird how these things connect.

Is it fair to say that the family tree for every modern fringe theory passes at one point through the Bible?

Reply

Only Me

5/2/2016 03:53:03 pm

Yes. Given the predilection of fringe theorists to cherry-pick any and all sources for "evidence", I would honestly be shocked if the Bible *wasn't* one of those sources.

Besides, Jason has noted previously that the Nephilim seem to be the linchpin for a lot of fringe ideas.

Reply

Time Machine

5/2/2016 07:09:50 pm

Simply because the very nature of the Nephilim accounts in the Bible are *easy pickings* for fringe theorists, who also like the Book of Enoch. Totally way-out colourful stuff that fits into their mindsets.

Only Me

5/2/2016 07:35:45 pm

Agreed.

When the prevailing mindset has been "all theories are equally valid", that creates an environment where all ideas, no matter how outlandish, are considered credible.

The same cherry-picking is applied to other sources, like the Mahabarata, which most people have never heard about. Even if they were to look at it, most would be intimidated by its volume...something the fringe counts on. Same thing with Sitchin, except his work was shown to be wrong once the Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Literature (DCCLT) and Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) became available.

V

5/4/2016 01:38:59 am

*tongue in cheek* All THEORIES are equally valid, as these are the things that have been tested and re-tested and been proven to be true under every set of circumstances we can currently conceive of, just shy of "natural laws."

....wait, what? I'm not supposed to actually do SCIENCE? What insanity is this!?

Only Me

5/4/2016 02:24:49 am

I hate having to use "theory" when it comes to the fringe, instead of "hypothesis". However, I've learned one thing when it comes to science and the fringe:

"Science."

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

flip

5/3/2016 03:57:36 am

What I always find interesting is how these guys always leave out Australia, as if it doesn't exist. I suppose it makes sense: American pseudoscientists talked about here are only interested in proving *their* special snowflake country is important/chosen by god/mysterious, and so ignore all other 'new worlds'. Which has interesting connotations all of its own...

Reply

DaveR

5/3/2016 09:17:40 am

Australia needs to get its own fringe people to make fabricated claims about how Australia is Atlantis. You know, it's sort of round, and instead of sinking, as in the myth, it was pushed to its current location by giants who had enough of the Atlantic weather systems and they wanted to make Tasmanian Devils into pets. And the New Zealand girls are cute. Ayers Rock is actually a UFO, that's why it changes color throughout the day. Seriously, all you have to do is unlock your imagination.

Reply

Jean Stone

5/3/2016 05:27:08 pm

I'll bet if you look hard enough, you could find someone who claims that Australia is actually Mu (which may or may not have founded or been a colony of Atlantis) and weave in some nonsense to explain why Koalas (or any of Australia and New Zealand's other highly specialized wildlife) didn't need to be on Noah's Ark and how the continent's legendarily dangerous wildlife is the result of ancient genetic engineering, or aliens, or alien genetic engineers.

And if there isn't anything like that out there, we could make it up as a collaborative project, document it, see if any publishers bite, split the profits and publish a followup book exposing the intellectual emptiness of the fringe.

flip

5/3/2016 08:53:47 pm

Oh I have no doubt that out there somewhere are people who do think that way; my point is that those who choose America to be Atlantis/New Israel are more likely to be American, and those who choose Australia as Atlantis are more likely to be Aussie. It's never about their exposure of the 'real' history of their country but rather some sort of need to validate their own personal importance. Just as the Sinclairs etc all really need their ancestry to lead all the way back to Templars; it makes their heritage important/special, which makes them special.

Armchair psychology aside, from an outsider's perspective, it seems that a lot of (woo-thinking) Americans act like the rest of the world only exists when they want it to. Conspiracies of governments or their departments, NASA, presidencies, local organisations... not one of these 'theorists' ever wonders how one country can manage so well to control every aspect of every other country's institutions and the people outside of American borders. The pomp and patriotism always strikes me as over the top and weird... if not incredibly naive. ... As if everyone outside of America is just so awed by your technological/financial/political prowess that we all want to suck up to an aging superpower to the point where we're living an Orwellian obedient lifestyle with no interest in our own local issues that actually affect us.

... Sorry for the mini rant but that kind of Ameri-centrism always bugs me.

V

5/4/2016 01:37:14 am

flip, the phenomenon you're talking about stems from two causes. One is that there are only two nations that border the United States; our country is just about as big as all of Europe. Stupid Americans only think America is important because most of them have never been anywhere NEAR American borders, much less across them. Many of them can barely comprehend that their STATE might be different from another. In other words, sheer provincialism.

The other is an attribution of almost god-like status to "the government." I have seen this same phenomenon in people who aren't American, by the way. But "the government" is capable of literally anything, no matter how outrageous, no matter how impossible. The democratic/representative process is meaningless to them. The ponderosity of bureaucracy only exists while they're directly experiencing it. "The government" is a single-minded entity with near omniscience and total omnipotence, and nothing you can say will teach them otherwise. Pointing out how many FAILS "the government" has sure doesn't.

Logically, then, if nothing beyond the closest twenty square miles matters, and "the government" is God, everything relates to the closest square miles and nothing is beyond the scope of "the government."

This is known as the "GIGO principle."

Or a Donald Trump speech.

Either one.

flip

5/4/2016 04:28:18 am

V, I dispute your hypothesis. :)

Australia is bordered by no other country, but you don't see the same frequency of hubris from the various media in political, social, cultural or fringe circles. Europe could indeed fit inside the Aus. continent as well. We have politicians screaming about border issues too, just it involves more about boats and less talk about fences, though it's more about security theatre than anything else. Given the similarities in terms of geography, I take issue with the suggestion that it's largely a geographical problem rather than a largely cultural one.

If you'll forgive the essay...

My suspicion is that the Ameri-centrism stems from a lack of cross-culture mainstream media on American TV, in movies and in the news. You have the majority of media produced locally, which means little is seen from differing perspectives, or where the US is criticised or shown from an outsider's perspective.
(Whereas Australian media is largely made up of imports from America and Britain, with a smattering of other cultures mixed in) A tendency to focus on American achievement and history through the education system (ie. overthrowing the Brits, civil wars, civil rights, financial prowess, the cold war, etc) and the media probably cements such insular views as well.

Again, from an outsider's perspective and for example, I follow no non-American podcasts, blogs or sites. Why? It just turns out that American skeptics are easier to find on the net, because they have larger audiences and are usually self-referencing each other. Not that there's anything inherently bad about that, but I would have to work to find non-American voices because they kind of get drowned out a bit, or at least not noticed by American bloggers to the same extent so I can't trip over them by accident as easily as I can with American ones.

At the same time, in Australia the tin foil brigade are less likely to get press time or be taken seriously by anyone... unless you are into alt med which is pretty ubiquitous here, but even then it's restricted more towards limited lifestyle TV programming rather than the evening news. We have no Fox News (we do get it on cable but that's a luxury most don't have. Technically half our media is owned by Murdoch who is of course... Australian. But still our news is extremely tame in comparison to Fox. And CNN funnily enough), nor CNN and our news tends to be far less sensationalised or so obviously politically biased. Indeed I can think of no locally produced TV show or news program that even comes close to the kind of hype that airs on these American channels.

As an example we just 'celebrated' the 20th anniversary of a mass murder spree - the one that got our government to ban guns in Australia, and was quite a big thing back then as such things are rare here - there was no mainstream media exposure of people denying it happening, conspiracies (though they do exist you'd have to research the event to find out about them), no insistence that the gun lobby be kept in or out of politics, no continual hand-wringing over psychotropic meds or video games or secularism in society or anything else. Anyone espousing such conspiracies, and there are people who believe it was faked, are not given any air time at all and probably laughed out of the room by any reporter who comes across them. The reporting was mostly retelling what happened and calm reporting on political viewpoints on current gun laws/stats. This kind of logical, responsible, calm reporting seems impossible in American media where every moment of a tragedy is captured, edited, analysed, sensationalised, hyped and wrung of every last bit of human drama.

We also have fewer free-to-air TV channels overall - 20 or so currently, most new - which means Americans have far more content available in the media and far more opportunity to be news of the week on niche channels that cater and give a voice to the fringe. The irony being that while we have fewer outlets we also have fewer extremist (ie. tin foil not just alternative) views appearing as the norm.

But the other thing is that there tends to be a 'rah rah America is great' sort of attitude in both the American media and the fringers, a sort of patriotism that we Aussies look at with bemusement. We're not that excitable when it comes to patriotism and at least for me it's always seemed somewhat... overwrought. Fourth of July is hugely important it seems, but here our national patriotic public holiday is just an excuse to not go to work.

Likewise the distrust of government and the overconfidence in its abilities to be all-powerful seems to be far more pervasive in American thinking than elsewhere. Especially those of us who live in more socialist countries where we are both grateful for say, the socialised health services, but also recognise and deride the bureaucracy that goes with it, expecting government to be wrong more often than not, without actually wanting to throw the bab

flip

5/4/2016 04:42:37 am

Damn I got cut off...

... without actually wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater by violently overthrowing it (as the Tea Party wanted a while back). I'm sure there are other people out there who have also noticed this and written about it, but there's sort of a thread of distrust that probably has less to do with libertarianism or provincialism and more to do with the colonial origins of American politics, a distrust of people in power from the start, and the propaganda that comes from being a rising superpower in the last 100 years.

I don't disagree that these sort of people and that sort of hype exists elsewhere,
just that they seem to be in larger numbers/louder in the US than in other places. Maybe it's just greater ease of access to media and the internet, but Americans make up a majority of those people it seems, with those in the UK coming second in my estimation.

If your media and education is insular, and you're consistently told that your country is founded on freedom and freedom is more important than healthcare, that power is for/by the people/you and not those others at the top, and that your country has a history of being the superpower for a good century with lots of racial issues in between, then you're going to end up with a large group of people who distrust government and power, are overly patriotic, and are insular towards others.

TL;DR If it were merely about geography then you'd see a similar scale of tin foilery in Australia, but I think specific cultural values, lack of media exposure to others and an over-emphasis on patriotism are the more likely culprits.

That's my armchair $2 anyway ;)

BTW, O.O is about my only reaction to what is happening with regards to Trump. W. T. F. We've had about five or six leadership coups in as many years, a prime minister who asked (and received) the Queen to knight her own husband on behalf of Australia, but extreme conservative Americans take the political cake for thinking Trump should be anything other than a hairdo joke.

E.P. Grondine

5/3/2016 12:00:18 pm

Perhaps that is because Australia is not mentioned in the Bible.
;o)

Reply

flip

5/3/2016 08:57:45 pm

:) Or because Australia's history meant that it was a backwater to use as one giant holding prison! No one wants the promised land to be a former jail. ;)

E.P. Grondine

5/3/2016 11:56:41 am

A few notes about Rafinesque -

Not only was Rafinesque broke, but he had suffered through various personal attacks for many years. One has to remember that despite some rhetoric, Native Americans were generally considered as sub-human savages by most of the English colonists.

Rafinesque's interest in them was beyond both their understanding and approval.

His major work never saw publication.

Rarfinesque worked in a world in which both the Bible and Plato were considered to be literally true. Rafinesque used comparisons to European remains (which had been Biblically dated) to date Native American remains, and he also invented names for phylogenies for Native American peoples, just as he had for biological specimens.

While a well funded effort (Oestreicher) is arguing both that Rafinesque fabricated the Walum Olam out of whole cloth AND to create an entirely imaginary history of the Shawnee in Ohio, in point of fact the migration of the Wolf Division of the Lenape through Ohio is well documented by the distribution and dating of Marksville culture in Ohio. (The Wolf division of the Lenape was distinct from the Lenape Turkey and Turtle Divisions. Monongahela Late Woodlands is distinct from Keyser Late Woodland.)

Joseph Smith was familiar with contemporary archaeological work when he wrote his books, believed by some 13 million Americans today to be the word of God. But in my opinion the true source of the sacred science of cult archaeology was Augustus Le Plongeon.

As far as Nephilim goes, the colonists were finding Andaste remains, and trying to fit them into their existing world view.

Rafinesque's surveys of sites were used by many antiquarians, including Squire and Davis.

Reply

Leave a Reply.

About Me

I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.